the wonderful mess that we made
by paradisdesbilles
Summary: Cursed!Lieutenant Ducking AU. Her hand shoots to her throat, finger finding the necklace there as she starts to play nervously with the silver pendant – two delicate swans whose necks form a heart. The metal is cold against her fingers, soothing in ways she doesn't understand – does it mean something to her? something she cannot remember? who gave it? does it even matter?


A cute elderly couple, driving to Rockland in their little sedan, finds her on the side of the road. Eyes wide and hair tousled, she hugs her chest tightly and clenches her jaw not to shiver with cold and fear. Her dress is torn and sleeveless, what little fabric covering her skin doing nothing to protect her from the cold Maine wind. The old woman, bless her soul, runs out of the car and toward her, throwing a cardigan on her shoulders and rubbing her hands against the girl's arms.

"Poor thing. Poor, poor thing," she keeps saying, eyes and smile kind as she leads the girl to her car.

Even when she settles on the back seat of the car, her arms are carefully wrap around her chest, biting on her lower lip, eyes lost and frightened. She accepts the bottle of water and munches on the cereal bar without a word, without even glancing at her saviours. They turn the heater to the maximum, the old woman smiling even more when she sighs at the wave of cold against her redden cheeks.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Emma."

Her voice feel small and broken, her throat dry like old parchment, so she takes another sip of water and coughss. Better, only slightly.

"Emma," the woman repeats with a nod. "What happened to you, my dear?"

She opens her mouth to reply but finds herself out of words, her mind black in its emptiness. She frowns and tries to focus, but finds herself unsuccessful once again.

"I… I don't know. I can't remember. I can't remember anything."

Her hand shoots to her throat, finger finding the necklace there as she starts to play nervously with the silver pendant – two delicate swans whose necks form a heart. The metal is cold against her fingers, soothing in ways she doesn't understand – does it mean something to her? something she cannot remember? who gave it? does it even matter? – while the elderly couple look at her with concern in their eyes.

She tries not to panic.

She fails.

…

The couple brings her to the police station in a nearby little town, where a nice police lady takes care of her – she is wrapped in a thick woollen blanket and given a hot cup of tea, put in their break room where she huddles against the heater until her fingers stop trembling and her skin is no longer purple, her blood no longer icy.

The lady asks her a hundred questions – her surname, her address, what happened, where are her parents – but Emma finds herself only able to give her first name and age, seventeen. Everything else is static in her mind, like a broken television.

No injury or obvious trauma explains her amnesia, and her fingerprints are not in the database. Ultimately, the police can do little to nothing to help her, so they follow the procedure.

They call the social services.

She is too old to hope finding a family so she's put in an orphanage until they give her papers – calling her Swan after the necklace she cannot stop touching and making her eighteen not to have one more mouth to feed in the too-crowed orphanage. A pat on the shoulder and she's on her way, having no idea where she is supposed to go and how she's supposed to survive.

She thinks things could not be worse until, a few weeks later, she pucks even if she hasn't eaten anything, her stomach hard and her breasts hurting from a child she doesn't even remember making. She almost laughs at her fate, for it is better than crying.

…

She runs to the closer Planned Parenthood when her waters break because she has nowhere else to go, surprised that she never lost the baby in the first place with the life she has and the food she doesn't get. Her arms are skinny and her ribs visible when she takes her ratty shirt off, so they understand when she wants to give the child away and reassure her it is the wise thing to do, that she's giving him – _her son_ – his best chance by doing so.

The employee taking care of her, a woman with brown hair and a kind smile, helps her on her feet afterwards. In a matter of days, they find Emma a job and place to stay – waitress and a shoebox room in a city near Boston. It isn't much but it is enough.

She manages to save some money, enough to have a fridge empty at all times and to buy nice clothes once in a while – it feels like a luxury, owing pretty things – until she's able to move in a bigger apartment, one with several rooms and a washing machine. She even gives up on her waitress job eventually and, one thing leading to another, finds herself chasing criminals at the tender age of twenty-five.

Her life is a quiet, peaceful one – it's a lonely one too, but she is not one to complain. She doesn't make friends that easily anyway, the less the merrier.

Eventually, she forgets about that dreadful Maine afternoon.

That is, until a ten year-old boy, with black hair and shiny blue eyes, knocks on her door and turns her life upside down.

("Who's my dad?" he asks, and Emma is tempted to lie, to tell a beautiful story about a brave firefighter dying on the job. But Henry's eyes are so deep and so curious and so blue, and she cannot do that, not to him. "I don't know," she whispers back, fingers against swan pendant. She isn't exactly sure Henry believes her.)

…

Graham dies and she drinks herself into oblivion, because it seems like the natural thing to do.

She sits in a dark corner of the Rabbit's Hole and drinks, glass after glass after glass of whiskey, until her vision is blurry around the edges and she can't remember right from left. It feels good, the buzzing sound in her ears and the cotton in her throat – if only for one night, she forgets. About Graham, about Henry's fairy tales, about her mother-roommate. She forgets _everything_, if only for one night.

And the following morning, as she makes her way to Granny's, she relishes in the massive hangover, welcomes her headache with open arms. All she wants is drown in coffee only to go back to the loft and sleep all day long – she has no boss to answer to anyway, and this is Storybrooke she's talking about, it won't suddenly combust because the only cop in town is taking a day off. Perhaps a bath, perhaps a good book. Yes, it does sound good.

Instead, opening the diner's door, she's introduced rather violently to a well-built torso, quickly followed by a burning hot cup of coffee. The liquid spills on her neck and trickles down her back and chest, hot and steaming and more effective than a hundred Ibuprofens.

"Bloody hell!" the guy shouts at the same time she hisses a "holy shit!" and they stare at each other for long seconds – green against blue, vaguely familiar and very much pissed.

"How about you look where you're going, _love_?"

The pet name sounds like an insult in his mouth, his Irish accent making him even ruder as his stare turns into a glare. She huffs in indignation – the guy has some nerves – as she folds her arms against her wet chest and ruined shirt, standing her grounds.

"Oh, just _fuck off_, would you."

Something shifts in his eyes, an emotion she knows all too well – it's the same every jerk has when a poor feeble woman dares standing up to him instead of knowing her place – and all she wants right now is to punch him because she is not in the mood and she has coffee all over her and _fuck off, okay_.

"Calm down, princess."

From insulting to mocking in the blink of an eye. She sees red.

"Calm down? _Calm down_? How about you stop with the condescending tone, huh?"

Emotions flicker on his face, so fast she would have missed it if she weren't staring at him, before he settles for anger – mirroring her without a doubt. When he opens his mouth, it's with an insult on his lips and venom on the tip of his tongue, and it takes a grand total of ten second before it turns into a shouting match. They must make quite the scene, throwing insults back and forth in front of Granny's, but she doesn't find it in herself to care until Ruby charges in to pull them apart.

She shoos the guy away in a matter of second, hitting him with a dishcloth like it's something she's done all her life, before looking back at Emma with her hands on her hips. "What did you _do_? I've never seen James so pissed before."

It leaves Emma speechless – gosh, she didn't do anything _for once_ – as she gestures to her stained shirt in defeat. Ruby softens a bit, if only because she has a soft spot for fashion, and she tells Emma to follow her with a nod and a smile.

Before entering the diner, she looks above her shoulder, only to see the guy walking down the street, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket. She doesn't understand the need to check if her necklace is still there.

…

She wishes she could say it was a one-time thing. Wishes she could have forgotten this unfortunate accident and gone on with her life and more pressing problems.

A sweet utopia.

She'd never seen that James guy before but now he seems to be everywhere she goes, as if taking a sadistic pleasure in following her all around town. And when he's here, it's always with insults well hidden under layers of sarcasm and annoying little smirks.

It's been two weeks, and she has to admit even Regina isn't half bad compared to him, because the guy is a nightmare wrapped into a handsome face wrapped into a leather jacket, and all she wants is to punch him.

Or even kill him.

She's sure he deserves it anyway.

…

("You may not believe in the curse. Or me. But I believe in _you_.")

She failed him.

He lies pale and lifeless, a hundred tubes stuck to his arms, and she _failed him_. It's the only thing she can think about, the only idea she can wrap her mind around. She failed him. She takes a step close, feels nauseous because she _failed him_, she just _failed_, she let him _die_ and…

A sob is stuck in her throat as, slowly, delicately, she brushes the dark strands of hair off his forehead. What she wouldn't give for him to flutter his eyelids once more, wouldn't do to drown in the ocean of his eyes one last time.

This isn't fair.

Most things in life aren't, she knows, but he's so young and hopeful and innocent. She failed him and this isn't fair.

"I love you," she whispers as a last confession, voice laced with guilt and pain, before she presses her lips to his forehead – to say goodbye. They barely brush his skin that she feels it, the rush of light and wind and _magic_ – feels it and gasps loudly as she squints her eyes against the images invading her brain, taking over her mind.

Waves crashing against a castle's walls, the sun setting above the sea, white sails barely visible in the horizon – a ball, her first, nervous in her white gown and pretty shoes as she asks her father to teach her the steps – her mother's kind smile and easy laugh as Emma blushes at some lord kissing her hand – his eyes, so blue and deep and knowing, his smile, so gentle and blight and loving – his hand in hers as they dance, his forehead against her as they share secrets – ten year older but wise beyond his age and kind as an old soul, ten years that means nothing when he's bold enough to ask King David for her hand despite his lower rank – the swan necklace, a betrothal gift as well as a promise – wedding and dancing and Regina's dreadful laugh and her curse – their first and last night together, body sore and aching and used, kisses long and desperate – Maine, cold windy Maine, blinking up at the sky and not remembering.

She gasps, and Henry gasps, and they stare at each other for long seconds as she blinks away the tears.

"You saved me," he says as she whispers a "oh my god" that barely begins to describe what she's feeling, thinking, right now.

And damn be Regina and her regrets and her 'I love you's, because Emma doesn't care, she _just doesn't give a damn right now_. She grabs Henry's clothes and helps him getting dressed to go fast, faster, not even answering when he asks what happened, what is going on, Mom, calm down, tell me.

A laugh, or perhaps a sob, escapes her lips at _Mom_, but she doesn't have time to explain, doesn't have time to stop. She just grabs his coat, grabs his hand, and runs outside the hospital and down the main street toward Granny's, toward the couple she sees in the distance and…

"Mama! Papa!"

With the synchronisation True Love give them, they both turn to look at her, eye widening and smiles growing, before she jumps in their arms, squeezing tight tight _tight_ until she can't breathe, until all she sees and feels and smells is them, only them, only her parents.

"You found us," Snow whispers in awe, tears in her eyes and chin trembling as she caresses her daughter's chin.

She just laughs, deep and loud, laughs and bites her lip as she replies cheekily, "I will always find you."

David is about to wrap her into yet another bear hug when someone startles them all by clearing his throat. A cough she knows, one she's all too familiar with, and she turns around, slowly, slowly.

He's there – he's actually _there_, all straight back and square shoulders and everything – and he stares at Henry, blue meeting blue. They've never been in the same room before, not that she's aware of at least, but now that they're standing next to each other there is no denying it. Same hair and eyes, same stubbornness in the way they hold their head, same hope and love and kindness.

"Who are you?" Henry asks, blissful oblivious.

"I…" he tries and blushes – here he is, her awkward sailor. "Captain Killian Jones, lad. And if I'm correct, I also happen to be your father."

And then both sets of eyes are on her, pleading and desperate and oh so blue. Emma chokes back yet another sob, hand coming to her mouth in a failed attempt at some composure. She only nods, not trusting her mouth or her mind in that moment, nods and watches a grin settling on Henry's lips as he looks back to his father only to attack him with a hug. Killian freezes at first but soon hugs him back. This is enough for Henry to go on a hug spree, David and Snow the next on his list.

"Emma." Her name on his lips startles her – he's close, so close she can feel the warmth of him, can only drown in his eyes. "Emma, gods. I'm so sorry."

It flashes back in front of her eyes, all their scenes and arguments of the past few weeks, and the insults and glares and hateful thoughts. Her eyes widen as she bites on her lips, hard enough to draw blood, but the giggle escapes her anyway, followed by another and another until she's laughing hysterically as she throws herself in his arms.

They are warm and firm and familiar as he hugs her back, face against her neck and lips to her skin. He whispers to her, love letters and apologies and promises, before she claims his lips – claims them for the first time in eleven years, home at last.

They break away from air, his fingers trailing down her throat to her collarbone until they toy with her necklace, a proud grin tugging his lips.

"We have a son. We're the same age and we have a son. Bloody hell, lass."

She laughs once more, but the sound is soft this time as her fingers follow the bridge of his nose, the scarf on his cheek. The words die on her lips, unable to formulate what she wants to say, until she settles for a simple "I love you".

"And I you, milady."


End file.
